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Chapter 7: Secretive
When Velma arrived home it was 7.14 pm. Her place was empty but she found two notes on the fridge. One said hope you’re ok, see you later, Love M xx. The other, in larger, more ungainly script, said LET’S SECURE DROP. TALK LATER X . She was encouraged by the added kisses. Despite her shocking disclosure, her friends were still friendly.
Velma took a shower before forcing herself to check social media and news websites to see if they were still talking about bloodless. They were. All of them were. The tabloids escalated public fear with speculation and completely made-up content. The more reputable news outlets shared interviews with doctors and scientists who tried to sound knowledgeable by spewing hypothetical advice about what people should do if such-and-such happened, and what it would mean if that didn’t happen, but something else did. Online forums were filled with panicked questions from members of the public, and authoritative answers from other members of the public who’d got their info from various important-sounding people who knew nothing about it. Arguments became heated and foul-language-laced insults were thrown back and forth between thousands of people.
Velma closed her laptop, leaned back in her seat and sighed. This was bad. Really bad. She resisted the temptation to keep blaming herself for creating this panic by killing four people at once because she now knew, from what the Health Minister had said, that they’d been aware of bloodless for more than thirty years. So if she hadn’t killed four at once and got the ‘disease’ in the news, she wouldn’t have known that they were going to begin research on animals, and she wouldn’t have been able to stop them. That is, she wouldn’t have known she needed to stop them, so she wouldn’t have stopped them.
Point is, she told herself, you’ve got to stop them!
“Now I’m hungry!” she thought with exasperation. She hadn’t slept very well that day, due to all the noisy children on the clattering, whistle-blowing miniature railway, and after those exhausting flights last night, she really needed a good day’s sleep. Preferably in a bed. But she couldn’t sleep yet, she needed to work on how to tell the world it was a vampire, not a disease, that had killed those prey serial killers victims? No, she couldn’t bring herself to think of them as victims. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword after all. She sighed again. “How do I convince the world of the truth without exposing myself?” It was a lot. She needed sustenance.
It was Andy’s turn to host game night, and she was expected there in about an hour. That didn’t give her much time to refuel. Maybe she could get something locally. Obviously it was important not to hunt close to home very often, but she had gone out of town last night so maybe she could get away with staying local tonight. Given the time constraints she reluctantly decided on KFC. She really didn’t fancy another greasy meal but at least she’d be able to get to Andy’s on time.
*
She got to Andy’s place before Muriel and found him in his natural habitat – surrounded by computers. She watched him tapping away at one keyboard before suddenly rolling his fancy ergonomic task chair to the next one, doing something there, assessing it and then moving to a third at the other end of the table.
She startled him with a hello and he knocked over his cold tea.
“Michael Bentine!” he exclaimed and grabbed the kitchen roll to mop it up.
Velma laughed, “Michael Bentine? What?”
Andy grinned, “I’m trying not to swear,” he explained. He tossed the soggy paper towel into the bin and looked back at his screen. “I’m glad you’re here anyway, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“What are you doing?”
He tapped a few more keys before looking up. “Let’s wait for Muriel, and then I’ll explain everything.”
Velma nodded. “Is Muriel okay?” she asked nervously.
Andy shrugged. “I think so.”
“Are you?”
“I am actually,” he smiled. “I really am because – well, it was a lot – what you told us. But I know you, and you’re not a murderer. You’re a predator, sure, but not a monster. It’s not murder coz it’s primal. You’re like a tiger or a polar bear.”
Velma was relieved. “Yes. Thank you.”
“So that’s part of what inspired me to come up with this -” He gestured towards the laptop in front of him but then stopped mid-sentence. “No, I’ll tell you when Muriel gets here.”
Velma tried to look at his screen but he closed the laptop. “Is that new?” she asked.
“Yes, it is. I thought I should get a new one for this, and only use it for this, so that – let’s wait for Muriel.”
“What’s on these then?” Velma stepped around the table to look at the other two open laptops, only to have him close them too before she could make sense of anything. “I know,” she said, “let’s wait for Muriel.” She looked at the clock. It was 8.45. “Or, you could tell me what you’re thinking now, and then we could both – no? No, let’s wait for Muriel.”
At 8.47, Muriel arrived. She said hello to Andy and offered Velma a tired smile. “What are we playing tonight then guys?”
“Tonight,” said Andy, “we’re going to be working out our next move.”
“I got the impression you’d already worked it out,” said Velma.
“Yes, I have. I have but I thought we should discuss it to make sure we’re all on the same page. Make sure we all agree that this is the best way forward.” His friends nodded. “Because if we get it wrong, there could be disastrous consequences for all of us.”
“Okay okay,” Muriel tried to move things along, “enough with the melodramatics! It’s serious. We get it. Now tell us what you’ve worked out!”
“Right,” Andy began, “so Velma, you’ve kept your vampireness secret for, what – forty years?”
Velma nodded.
“And you use your special skills, your circumstance you might say, to help the animals.” He paused for confirmation which came in the form of another nod from Velma. “So, in forty years, have you seen any improvement in the way animals are treated? As a result of your, er, activism?” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Do you think the population is learning not to exploit animals? Not to consume them or enslave them? Not to kill them for profit or pleasure?”
Velma shook her head. “No,” she admitted, “I haven’t made any difference to the big picture.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“I’ve taken a lot of killers out of the picture though,” she said defensively, “I made sure those people couldn’t kill any more.”
“True, but not what I’m getting at,” he said with eyebrows raised. “My point is that because you’ve been -“
“Secretive!” Muriel blurted out, “because she’s been secretive, no one learns anything from her kills. No one tries to protect themselves by not hurting animals, because they don’t know that hurting animals can get them killed!”
“Exactly!”
“Yes, okay, so what you’re saying is that by protecting myself, my identity, I have done nothing to effect real change.”
Andy shook his head. “No, Velma, I’m not saying that. You did the best you could and you saved countless animals who would have died at the hands of the people you killed. What else could you do? If you had been open about who you were and what you were doing you would have been stopped. Decades ago probably.” He waited for nods from his audience before continuing. “But things are different now. Now, we have the internet!”
Muriel and Velma looked at each other and smiled.
“What are we going to do?” Muriel asked.
“We’re going to tell the world!” Andy announced. “That is, I’m going to tell the world.” He smiled. “I’m going to use encrypted software, on an encrypted browser, to communicate with news organisations using SECURE DR-” he paused. “Basically, it’ll be anonymous. They won’t be able to trace the communication back to me and you’ll be safe. We’ll be safe.”
“What are you going to tell them? They’re not going to believe -“
“They will believe it because you’re going to tell me everything you can remember about when, where and who you’ve killed. It’s gotta be in the thousands hasn’t it? I guess you can’t remember -“
“I’ve had to kill at least five people a week, for thirty nine years and seven months -” she did the maths in her head, “that’s more than ten thousand people,” Velma daren’t look at her friends’ faces, “and I remember every single one of them.”
After a short pause Andy replied. “And that’s what we’ll tell them. That’s how we’ll prove to them that this is not a hoax. With ten thousand-plus names -“
“I don’t know their names,” Velma interrupted. “Well, except Doug.”
Muriel’s eyes widened but she decided that was a question for later. Or maybe it was better she didn’t know.
Andy continued. “Well, that probably doesn’t matter. If you know places and dates, male or female, they’ll be able to verify that those people died of bloodless. At least the ones who died in the last twenty years anyway. And they’ll also be able to tell that those people were involved in animal cruelty in one way or another, directly or indirectly.”
“And we’ll tell them why they were killed,” Muriel said excitedly, “that the vampire was protecting their future victims, that the vampire doesn’t kill vegans! And that’s how we’ll teach people to change their ways! They’ll stop eating meat and drinking milk and fishing and hunting and vivisecting and trapping and confining – because they don’t want to die!” She paused for breath and smiled. “That’s how we’ll make the world vegan!”
“My thoughts exactly,” Andy smiled. “Now I’ll show you what I’ve been doing.”
While she waited for him to restart his new laptop, Velma felt the need to say something quietly, just to Muriel. To see where Muriel’s head was at, find out if she understood like Andy did. She spoke so quietly that Muriel almost didn’t hear her. “I know it’s a lot, ten thousand people.”
Muriel looked at her thoughtfully. “Ten thousand serial killers,” she specified. Then she hugged her friend. “You did want you had to do Velma.”
**
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